Canadian TV, Computing and Home Theatre Forums banner

MythTV 0.28 Released With FFmpeg3.0, H.265, VP9 & more

6K views 29 replies 7 participants last post by  Wheelman 
#1 ·
Happy to report that the do-it-all, jack-of-all-trades MythTV HTPC project has just been updated to version 0.28 with a bunch of new goodies, advanced codecs, updates, overhauls, and the initial work on WebFrontend to replace MythWeb:

https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Release_Notes_-_0.28

MythTV is ideally for Linux HTPCs, but there are ports available for FreeBSD, OS X, and Windows.
 
#5 ·
I have an HTPC set up that does not have recording functionality - simply a means of storing my DVD's and Blu Rays. I recently bought a Panasonic TC-60CX650U 4K television and have replaced the Rogers 8300 PVR with their 4K service. Rogers 4k box does not offer PVR, so I'm looking for an alternative. I know that I will not be able to record 4k, but would be happy if I could at least record HD.

Is this MythTV a solution?
 
#8 ·
I use NextPVR on Windows 10. It works well and is fairly easy to set up. It doesn't have some of the more advanced MythTV features like automated commercial skipping.

MythTV is certainly an option and a Windows version is available. I get the impression that it runs a lot better on Linux. I tried it on Windows once and didn't have much luck.
 
#9 ·
Since you are somewhere in Toronto, Rideauman, you would find that MythTV excels at being an OTA PVR when used with one or more ATSC tuner devices (usually USB sticks). It also streams video, audio, photo, and data content within your home to a wide variety of devices. I have never run it on Windows so I can't vouch for it on that OS.
 
#12 ·
The load of 2 simultaneous ATSC recordings is actually not very much. MythTV has run just fine on any PC with 2 or more cores I've put it on, and most new HTPCs I see for sale by commercial vendors are way overkill for just a mythbackend server. On Linux you can run the mythbackend machine headless (just command line) to lighten the load even further if its an older, weaker PC.

On a frontend client PC, MythTV has an excellent frame-precise wysiwyg video editor for your recordings, and you have the option of leaving the recordings as is with the commercials tagged so that the mythfrontend player skips over them, or you can take the additional step of mythtranscoding the recordings so that the file is actually trimmed of commercials forever and the keyframe index is reset. Again, the load on a multi-core PC is not much even when mythtranscoding.

You also have the option of running the mythbackend and a mythfrontend client all on the same PC, which is quite common and works well.

Over the years I've found the MythTV Wiki to be indispensible for hardware and configuration info.
 
#13 ·
I read the mythtv wiki and that's where I read that commercial detection uses quite a bit of CPU power when it's looking for commercials which is why I asked. So any desktop dual-core would be a good safe bet. What about low end mobile processors like atoms that are soldered to the board. Would it be able to cope?

I'm looking to build a low power(low cost if possible) file server for home in the future so I'm just trying to see what's out there and what I would need. The plan would be to toss a tuner card in the file server and install mythbackend and run the recordings thru Serviio to the TV so I would need to remove the commercials of all the recordings. Some of the tuner cards that are said to be supported by mythtv have hardware mpeg2 encoder on the card for NTSC signals. Could mythtranscoding use the mpeg2 encoder on the card to offload cpu usage when removing the commercials?
 
#17 ·
There is a point where extra CPU power becomes a total waste of resources and money, both in initial cost and electricity costs. The sweet spot these days seems to be in a 45w to 65w TDP dual core or quad core CPU. That would typically be a high end core i3 or low end core i5 CPU. To save costs, a recent, AMD Kaveri or later mid range CPU should also be adequate.
 
#18 ·
Linux-based MythTV load is very low

ExDilbert said:
To save costs, a recent, AMD Kaveri or later mid range CPU should also be adequate.
Yep, absolutely true, the AMD line of lower cost CPUs are just fine. Over the years I ran earlier versions of MythTV on 2-way Intel and AMD CPUs, and then for a few years I used an AMD 4-way and then later a 6-way CPU with 8GB ram only because I had other tasks for the machine besides MythTV, and it was rarely spiked except when doing the occasional Handbrake transcode, which is not a MythTV tool but is certainly a complimentary one for HTPC users.

My AMD Phenom II 1100T 6-way mythbackend is still doing perfectly. :) It runs very cool and very quietly. When I am recording ATSC streams while watching a recording while running mythtranscode operations I can see with monitoring tools that the load of MythTV is quite low. Tools on Linux such as iotop and htop prove the point beyond any doubt.

It is too easy to overbuild a MythTV box, with overspending and overkill being the result.
 
#19 ·
The key will be to find out how much power the chips use at idle. I think Intel is better at it than AMD? Just grabbing the cheapest skylake desktop chip(Pentium/Celeron) would be enough power I reckon to handle any mythtv application while serving/streaming files to a Computer/TV at the same time.
 
#20 ·
My AMD Phenom II 1100T machine with 8GB ram supporting two ATSC USB sticks and 3 SATA II drives runs excellently on a 430W PSU that came with the HTPC case. It is fast, quiet, and has more than enough juice. The LAN speed is excellent for my several MythTV clients and the load is low.

I think you might be overthinking things and thus doomed to overspend! :D
 
#21 ·
You may be right! So you mean either find a cheaper chip or buy a used chip! I just figured skylake had better power saving properties.

That AMD processor of yours must be pretty power hungry. How much wattage is that system pulling?
 
#22 ·
For me the benefits outweigh the power load so I haven't ever given it much thought. As I say, a 430W PSU has been powering it fine with no burps or hiccups. If your power needs are more strict than my own then definitely look at the new Intels, but keep in mind that the initial cost of the CPU might wipe out the electrical bill savings over a cheaper CPU, so you might not break even for quite awhile. ;)
 
#23 ·
I have run mythtv on nothing more than a laptop with dual core intel cpu, and it is fine for me.
Currently it is running on a laptop with just an AMD Quad core cpu.
 
#24 ·
Which linux distrubution are you guys running myth on? I was just thinking, If I got a skylake cpu and I wanted to use Debian stable, I would have to compile the latest linux kernel? Is this an easy procedure? Or should I look at a different distro that is cutting edge? I use arch on my netbook but I don't want to use a rolling release on a server.
 
#26 ·
You can use Arch, Debian, whatever....

Just have to download the source and compile the mythtv release that you want.
There are good instructions on the mythtv wiki. If I can do it, anyone can:)

Nothing says you ever have to upgrade mythtv or your kernel once you get it going.
Unless there is a driver you need/want that isn't in your current kernel.
Or some new feature/bugfix that you wanna try/test in mythtv...

If there were a need/want for a specific DVB type device driver, there are ways around that too. What is your current kernel now, and what tuner device(s) do you plan on using? Mine is 4.5.0 currently, but I am a gluten for punishment.
 
#27 ·
I haven't set up a file server yet. I plan on building it in the future. I figured I'd use debian stable. It runs on 3.16 I think? I just need to capture ATSC signals. I wanted to use an internal pci express tuner card but they all seem awfully expensive. So I'd probably have to go with a USB tuner. I'd just go with the cheapest dual tuner(or single tuner, if two is cheaper than a single dual tuner?) that works with mythtv.

I plan on using a mini-itx board so I won't have the option of pci.

I'd probably avoid using mythbuntu, mythdora, etc as I don't like bloat.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top